How to Make People Line Up to Give You Their Data

Give them the product or service free…and make them think that “there is such a thing as a free lunch.”

My sister-in-law was visiting the other day from Israel. She opened her tablet, connected to my wi-fi, and said “I love Google. They know I am here and give me all of this information…for free.”

I didn’t really say anything at the moment, but I couldn’t help thinking about the future of a decentralized internet.

But there’s a hurdle.

One of the questions I get a lot about the token economy is “well, won’t I need to buy a token to participate in a network?”

The answer, of course, is yes. Yes, you will.

“Well,” they say, “why would I do that when I get it for free now?”

The answer is simple.

You ARE paying now.

You are paying a lot.

You’re just not paying with your dollars.

You’re paying with your data.

All of these services aren’t free, you’re just paying another way.

There’s an information asymmetry about how valuable each of our personal data is.

We don’t really think of it as valuable, but the Googles, Facebook, Amazons of the world KNOW it’s a gold mine.

For Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to work well, they need ever more amounts of data. They are insatiable beasts, as it were. So, when we get a new service for “free,” it’s important to remember that it’s just one company’s effort to suck more data out of us.

Ask yourself: If these companies are investing real dollars in developing these products and services and paying the employees, would they do it with no expectation of a return?

If these companies are investing real dollars in developing these products and services and paying the employees, would they do it with no expectation of a return?

Of course not.

Once people begin to realize just HOW valuable their personal data is (and maybe they never will or maybe it will be too late), things will get pretty interesting.

And that’s where blockchains come in.

You will be able to not only secure your data and grant permission-based access to it, you are going to be able to see, in real-time, just how much others value your data and your attention.

It’s why services like Brave Attention Token and 21.co are so intriguing to me. They may be the first generation, but they are harbingers of things to come.

I suspect that the migration to data safe harbors will happen over time.

Initially, you will see the first group of people who are huge data producers (a lot of IoT devices, for example) AND aware of their value to others, start to “go Galt” and opt out in some way.

Perhaps they will join a token-based collaborative that sells their data (anonymized) and en masse to the highest bidder, sharing the value generated among the members.

Perhaps a service like MetaMask, uPort, or Civic will offer this.

Then, as that becomes profitable, others will begin to join.

It’s going to be a race….can the large Internet players obtain total lock-in before people can find a way to monetize their data?